40d:Siege

A siege is a special time in Fortress mode when an army attempts to attack and kill all of your dwarves. It is at this time you should activate your military, keep civilians indoors, raise the drawbridges and pray you have your defenses ready.

During a siege, the option on the main menu 'Abandon Fortress' changes to 'Succumb to the Invasion'.

A siege is not to be confused with other types of hostile encounters - if you are besieged you will know. If you are unsure, you are not under siege. When you receive a siege, you receive a full-screen message "a vile force of darkness has arrived!" and the top of the screen reads "SIEGE" in yellow and red. Siegers are immediately visible at the map edge, whereas ambushers or thieves are not.

Siegers

Goblins

Goblins will send kidnappers and ambushers once your fort's population or wealth reaches a certain amount, and will start sieging once your population reaches 80. Sieges will increase in intensity depending only on how many previous sieges you have survived - a population higher than 80 does not increase the number of goblin siegers.

They arrive in squads of about 15 goblins each, frequently led by individual goblin weapon masters (or even babysnatched/refugee humans) and sometimes mounted on beak dogs, and occasionally accompanied by up to 3 squads of 5-8 trolls. They frequently are split into separate squads placed on different map edges. The first siege you see with a given fort might consist of as little as a single unmounted squad with no trolls, but the goblin forces will escalate in size as the game progresses. Later on you may be seeing 100 or more goblins show up in a single siege, all mounted, with 10 to 20 trolls.

Trolls are the goblin "siege engines". They are faster than beak dogs, and will make for buildings and start demolishing. Locked doors will keep the goblins out, but can be demolished by trolls.

If you deflect enough sieges, the ruler of the goblin nation may lead a squad. He's equipped with extra-good quality equipment.

Humans

Humans can siege your fortress, although the trigger is unclear. On entry to the map they will set up a Campfire and wait there for a while, making attacks of opportunity on dwarves that come to the surface, before taking the final headlong charge in much the same way as goblins.

The message is slightly different from the goblin sieges: "The enemy have come and are laying siege to the fortress".

They may be mounted on horses.

They may eventually send a diplomat, who will parley with your leader and offer a peace treaty.

Elves

As of Version 39f it is possible for Elves to lay siege to your fortress. You will get the standard message notifying you of a Siege; however, you will not be able to see any enemy units and the SEIGE banner across the top will instantly disappear. This is because all elven siegers enter the map sneaking; isn't that fun? The Elven squads typically consist of a mix of swordselves and wrestlers, all of whom will be using wooden equipment. Later sieges may also feature archers and spearelves, again with puny treebranches. The first time this happens, if your military consists entirely of prissy little girl cat-lovers (that is to say, Dwarves that might as well be Elves themselves), an Elven siege could be a problem. Otherwise, any reasonable and most unreasonable Dwarven (or, let's be honest, canine) military forces can knock the stick-wielding pansies halfway across the map. Difficulty may eventually increase, but come on, they're Elves.

Kobolds

Similar to Goblins, Kobolds will first send thieves dependent on your fort's population or, rather, wealth. Kobold archers will begin to arrive if the Kobold thieves successfully steal any items - the number of successive archers and thieves who arrive will depend on how many items were stolen previously.

Kobold archers tend not to directly siege your fort, but prefer to pick off individual Dwarves who may be working in the surrounding wilderness. They will leave once their arrows have been exhausted.

Defending against a Siege

Active Defense

Put your entire military on duty. With luck, most of them are not sleeping, eating, or drinking. If a squad leader is doing anything of that sort, replace him with a more alert squad member (the squad always clusters about the leader. If the leader's eating, the squad will guard the table). Place melee units at major choke points, so they can meet the enemy head on, but try to keep them out of direct fire from enemy missile users. Place your own marksdwarves where they can rain death down on the enemies. They can also shoot from different Z levels, use this. (This is why you build fortifications.)

War dogs are valuable, but shouldn't be the first line of defense, because the enemy bowmen will quickly take care of them. Assign them to your military dwarves, or cage them before the siege, and release them via lever/pressure plate as the enemy is rounding a blind corner. They're also useful for clearing the field once the siege ends.

Siege weapons, catapults and ballistae, can be effective during a siege, but can also be entirely useless. They don't have a wide field of fire, so you'll need to design your fortress ahead of time to funnel your attackers into the weapons' field of fire and then delay them with winding passages while in range. To use them effectively, you really need trained Siege Operators for the task, since siege weapons take up to three real-time minutes for inexperienced operators to load, and the weapons cannot be fired at a precise time; they will fire whenever the operator shows up. Fire early and often: siege operators are civilians, and will run away once the oncoming hordes get too close.

Passive Defense

If you have no trust in your military's power, keep all the dwarves inside and draw the besiegers into corridors with traps. Stone-fall traps are cheap and easy, but work only once before needing to be reset; weapon traps require weapons (and ammunition, in the case of ranged weapon traps), but reload themselves after a few seconds, until their components eventually get stuck due to all the gore. A 10-square-long entry hall filled with weapon traps will break most goblin sieges without any help.

A moat can provide a decent defense when combined with a drawbridge to either keep the goblins from entering, or to drop them right into the water. Magma may be substituted for far more lethal results. Even when not filled, a 1-tile wide channel is a fast and effective way of stopping besiegers or to guide them into areas you want.

Civilians

Your dwarves will still attempt to do their jobs during a siege, including cutting down trees or hauling in items and corpses from outdoors. Dwarves will run from invaders, but only after getting within crossbow-range, so their self-preservation skills are lackluster when the enemy has ranged weapons, or moves more quickly than them. There are several strategies to preserve your civilians' lives, none of them perfect.